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This is going to take a little explaining. In 1981, when it was contracted to Elektra Records in the U.S., Queen released an album called Greatest Hits (Elektra 564), which contained 14 songs that chronicled singles from 1973 to 1981. In 1990, Hollywood Records acquired CD rights to Queen's catalog, by which time the Elektra Greatest Hits had gone out of print on vinyl. Hollywood released Classic Queen, a compilation that covered Queen's hits from 1982 to its demise in 1991, with a few older songs thrown in. Then it ...
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This is going to take a little explaining. In 1981, when it was contracted to Elektra Records in the U.S., Queen released an album called Greatest Hits (Elektra 564), which contained 14 songs that chronicled singles from 1973 to 1981. In 1990, Hollywood Records acquired CD rights to Queen's catalog, by which time the Elektra Greatest Hits had gone out of print on vinyl. Hollywood released Classic Queen, a compilation that covered Queen's hits from 1982 to its demise in 1991, with a few older songs thrown in. Then it released this album, its version of Greatest Hits, which is a 17-track album that deletes the songs from the first Greatest Hits that appeared on Classic Queen (among them Queen's biggest hit, "Bohemian Rhapsody") and adds a few tracks from the 1973-1982 era that did not appear on the original release. The Elektra Greatest Hits LP had a superior selection, but it's gone now, so you're stuck with this. (New fans don't seem to have minded, as this new Greatest Hits sold better than the first one.) ~ William Ruhlmann, Rovi
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